Witnesses of the lower class

[JeffHamm]

Yep, all good points, and I was thinking more along the lines of A.
but I have since reminded myself that almost most of the post cards/ Letters that the Police received supposedly from JTR and clearly hoaxes were kept and held on to.

Regards

Hi,

Yes, the letters/postcards were held onto, but really they had no choice but to keep them. Those are "statements" forced upon the police, if you will, not ones they chose to take down. Once the communication was given to them, they have to file it. On the other hand, what they chose to do with those letters/postcards, would reflect their belief in them as being genuine. On one hand, they are obliged to follow up on them (which, of course, was a great waste of time and resources given the number of hoaxes they received). On the other, for those they believed to be obvious hoaxes, that follow up was probably minimal and terminated once they could demonstrate that "and no further leads were available to pursue". Letter's like "From Hell", where the possibility of it being a genuine communication due to the kidney inclusion, were followed up more extensively, first to establish if the kidney was the one missing from Eddowes, and presumably there was some attempt to track who sent it (there is the description of a man, with an Irish accent I believe, who was asking for Lusk's address at a store or something - I forget the details - but he was never identified). I think there is only one letter that was ever tracked back to the hoaxer, and given the large number of letters sent, I think that suggests that if tracking who sent them a hoax letter met with any "resistance", they were reluctant to put the resources into further investigation of the hoax. Otherwise, I would think they could have identified more people who sent them hoax letters, but it seems to me they must have decided that was not a good use of their limited resources.

Hmmm, might that be because those who sent them letters were more likely to be of "higher standing" than the lower classes? Someone who had the spare money to send a posted letter is clearly not scrounging daily for a few pennies to have a place to sleep after all.

- Jeff

[Bridewell]

Police officers will have written their own statements; the same goes for police surgeons. Witness statements from members of the public are not recorded "word for word". The statement taker elicits information by asking questions of the witness so as to get a clear idea of what the witness has seen and heard. He or she then writes the witness's account in a sequential and structured way, based on the account given. The witness then reads (or is read if illiterate) the statement before signing it in the appropriate places. A witness statement will not be in the witness's own words, regardless of their social class.

[Bridewell]

On a modern witness statement the name of the person taking the statement will be shown. In that space, in the case of a police officer, will be "Self-recorded" or something similar.

[Bridewell]

I think there is only one letter that was ever tracked back to the hoaxer.

- Jeff

There was one sent to Lord Sheffield which was very obviously from a disgruntled man named Edward Grover.

[JeffHamm]

There was one sent to Lord Sheffield which was very obviously from a disgruntled man named Edward Grover.

Hi,

Oh, I was unaware of that one as the one I recall was sent by a female writer, but I can't recall any other details as I'm not up on the full details of all the letters, etc. Interesting that this one had been sent to Lord Sheffield, and perhaps it was followed up for that reason though, which fits with the original topic idea.

- Jeff